A Sabbath Day's Journey

I do not think we should think that the word 'think' is a simple word.There are different words for thinking, and there should be. Just as--from what I have heard--the ekimos have different words for snow.

In the Gospel according to Matthew, Jesus uses a word for thinking that is closely related to the word for 'law', and that is also not very surprising. There are thoughts that people repeat so often that they start to think that they are completely true. Thoughts are powerful things (and if you search for that on google, you will see what I mean).

The first verse in the gospel text for this Sunday is Matthew 10:34. And there is an extremely similar verse in Luke 12:51. I will leave them in the ESV to show their similarities.

Matthew: Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.

Luke: Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.

This word 'think' in the Gospel according to Luke is connected to testing and examination. This, too, is a type of thinking, but it involves more things that are outside of ourselves.

To give you an example on how these two words compare, this is the same dictionary for the two different types of thinking. (This is also a good example of how it is difficult to translate one word into simply one other word.) Here is the definition of 'think' (according to BDAG) in Matthew: 'to form an idea about something, but with some suggestion of tentativeness or refraining from a definitive statement (think, believe, hold, consider). The same dictionary gives this much shorter definition of the different word in Luke: 'to consider as probable (think, believe, suppose, consider).'

Our thinking involves varying degrees of the things around us, but all of that is a bad starting place. All of that can be frustrating and literally self-defeating. The Bible is a much better foundation.

When you think of the cute baby Jesus in a manger, and when you hear the angels sing 'Peace on earth', that may start you down the wrong road--unless you hear the rest of the story.

The manger is really a feeding trough for animals. And when the people were praising Jesus as he entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday--in Luke--they were saying, 'Peace in HEAVEN....'

You might say that they were thinking 'outside of the box'. Now that is good. That is the peace that really matters.​There is no such a thing as a cute cross.